Grafton man's bar visits build cancer research funds

About 10 years ago, a popular Jimmy Fund commercial showed Boston ironworkers constructing a new research building across the street from the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute's children's ward. The children made signs with their names on them, and taped them to the windows for the workers to see. The ironworkers didn't have construction paper and markers, but they had cranes and spray paint. The children watched excitedly as their names were painted onto girders and then raised into place, story by story.

Todd Ruggere, 38, remembers that commercial well. After seeing it in a movie theater, he knew he wanted to do something someday to raise money for childhood cancer.

Fast forward to last fall, when Mr. Ruggere was in his office playing a trivia game with a co-worker. The challenge was to list all the towns and cities in Massachusetts. “I could barely get half of them, and I was amazed at some of the names — places like Florence and Florida — and I thought to myself, 'It would be cool to drive around, drink a beer and talk to people in each one of these towns.' ”

Then, like giant steel girders, two ideas were suddenly riveted together. What if, while he was at these bars, he asked people for donations to the Jimmy Fund? The next day, Mr. Ruggere phoned his favorite beer maker, Sam Adams Brewery in Boston, and explained his plan to their public relations department. They gave their blessing and all the Sam Adams T-shirts he would ever need.

Mr. Ruggere began his mission Jan. 4, and as of late March, has visited 93 towns, mostly centered around his home of Grafton.

Originally from Weymouth, Mr. Ruggere studied golf management at Coastal Carolina University. He returned to Massachusetts in the late 1990s and worked for Verizon for 12 years before the commute to Boston got to be too much. Three years ago, he moved to Grafton and now deals in mutual funds for BNY Mellon. Last summer, his married his fiancée, Katie Ruggere of Brimfield.

“I've met so many awesome people on this trip,” said Mr. Ruggere. “People come up to me and tell the story of a mother or a father or a sister they lost to cancer. In Rowley, I stopped at a bar and all the bartenders came out to shake my hand. It brought tears to my eyes.”

His best fundraising day was in North Attleboro, when he raised $1,000 at the Red Stone Grille and then the town Fire Department pitched in another $500.

He asks the bar owners to convert cash into a check. On Monday mornings, he gathers the checks he received that weekend and mails them to his contact at Dana-Farber. Thus far he's sent in $6,096.

Occasionally, he'll arrive in a town that doesn't have a drinking establishment. Then, he'll find private property and ask if he can crack open a cold one. In Plimpton, he found himself on a farm, chugging a brew and standing next to a llama as its owner snapped photos.

But drinking for a cause isn't all beer and skittles. With 351 towns and cities in Massachusetts, Mr. Ruggere has to balance his time and driving. If he's operating without a designated driver, usually his wife or sister, he'll limit himself to three beers total in one day. “If a bar holds an event for me, I'll raise decent money, but I could be there for five or six hours. If I don't publicize in advance, then I can cross off three or four towns in one day, but I won't get as many donations.”

Since all of the gifts go to the cancer center, the gas money for his 2004 Mitsubishi Endeavour comes from his own savings. He'll be feeling the pinch this summer as he treks to the more far-flung towns; for instance, Grafton to Provincetown is 139 miles; Grafton to Williamstown is 122 miles.

At Barre Mills Restaurant in Barre on a recent, quiet Thursday night, Mr Ruggere unassumingly sat at the corner of the bar and ordered a Sam Adams Alpine Spring. After he introduced himself to proprietor Nick Coppolino, Mr. Coppolino said, “I saw you on TV and hoped you would come here. My brother is a cancer survivor, and I think you're doing a great thing.”

At the other end of the bar sat Jim Boulette, sharing a drink with friend Robert Thompson, both Teamsters from nearby New Braintree. “I saw this on Facebook,” said Mr. Boulette. “It's few and far between to find people who will go out of their way for anything. There aren't a lot of people who put themselves out there, who will do something like this for charity. That's really cool.”

Mr. Ruggere didn't advertise this stop at Barre Mills, so things were slow. “We'd like for him to come back again, and we'll throw him a proper fundraiser,” said Mr. Coppolino. But the restaurant didn't send him home empty-handed. Before Mr. Ruggere departed for the hour drive from Barre to Grafton, bartender Lisa Diamond pulled her own checkbook from her purse and wrote him a donation.

Mr. Ruggere has a loose deadline to finish his touring by the end of the year, or “whenever my wife loses patience with me.” His final beer will be with Chairman Jim Koch at the Sam Adams Brewery. Before that he'd like to sip suds with Tom Brady on the field at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, or wet his whistle with President Barack Obama on his summer trip to Martha's Vineyard. But his dream drinking buddy is Conan O'Brien in the comedian's hometown of Brookline.

Mr. Ruggere said some of the best things about his trips are the people he meets and the stories he hears. For example, he listened attentively as Mr. Coppolino told how he helped catch the giant mako shark that now hangs on the north wall of his bar. In the summer of '89, he and then-employee Diane Kane of Phillipston were five miles out of Newport fishing for bluefin. Suddenly, she got a bite on her line and instead of tuna, they reeled in a 9-foot, 450-pound toothy monster. Mr. Coppolino drove from Rhode Island back home, and then to Maine — where there was a taxidermist who could preserve and mount big fish — with the dead shark hanging out of the back of his pickup truck.

Earlier this month, while in a bar on Plum Island after a severe winter storm, Mr. Ruggere met a man whose home had just been swept out to sea. “He was a good guy, he'd found his peace with it,” he told the bar patrons in Barre.

While raising money for the Jimmy Fund, each community he goes to, each bar he sits in, brings this diverse state just a little closer together. Like the iron workers who inspired him, it's story by story.

Today, Mr. Ruggere will be in East Longmeadow, Hampden and Monson. Sunday he'll be in Lincoln, Concord and Acton. For more information, visit www.351SamAdams.com.